The present invention relates to a method for testing objects in a telecommunications system. The invention relates further to an arrangement for performing testing operations in a telecommunications system.
A telecommunications network includes various objects or implementations, such as exchanges or switches, that need to be tested. The purpose of the testing is to test e.g. the used protocol and functionality of the telecommunications network and the various part and components thereof. Two common testing procedures are conformance testing and function testing. From these the first is used to test the conformity with the used standard or protocol, and the latter is used to test that the system or object operates and functions in accordance with the standards and protocols. The xe2x80x9cborder linexe2x80x9d between these is not, however, especially clear and tight, and thus these test may overlap.
A test may be accomplished when taking a new system in use, after maintenance, preparations or upgrading of a system, or periodically, i.e. certain intervals, or occasionally, e.g. after a certain predetermined event has occurred, or even randomly. In a telecommunications system the test may concern only one of the plurality of objects, e.g. one exchange, or then the whole system may be tested entirely or partially, i.e. all or predefined components (objects) of the system are tested during one test cycle.
An Abstract Test Method (ATM) and the testing configuration according to the ITU-T (International Telecommunication Unionxe2x80x94Telecommunication Standardization Sector) and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) are having a non-symmetric structure. The configuration of the testing arrangement is such that a Main Test Component (MTC) is arranged to serve the outgoing side of an apparatus to be tested and a Parallel Test Component (PTC) is arranged to serve the ingoing side of the apparatus to be tested (or vice versa).
However, a problem of this kind of testing arrangement is that the incoming and outgoing sides of the objects cannot be equivalently controlled in the testing process. In addition, the results obtained from the different sides are not comparable to each other. This in turn causes difficulties when analyzing the obtained test results.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art testing solutions and to provide a new type of solution for implementing a testing process of objects in a telecommunications system.
An object of the present invention is also to provide a method and arrangement by means of which it is possible to obtain comparable testing results from an incoming side and an outgoing side of an object, such as a telephone exchange.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will be brought out in the following part of the specification taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
The objects are obtained by a method for testing an object in a telecommunications system, said object having an incoming side and an outgoing side, wherein
a plurality of test components is allocated in parallel for the incoming and the outgoing sides of the object, testing routines are accomplished by the plurality of in parallel allocated test components for the incoming and the outgoing sides of the object,
the operation of the in parallel allocated test components is equivalently controlled by a main test component connected to each of the parallely allocated test components, whereby a symmetric test structure is provided for testing the incoming and the outgoing sides of the object.
A preferred an arrangement for testing an object in a telecommunications system, said object having an incoming and an outgoing side, comprises
a plurality of test components which are allocated in parallel for the incoming and the outgoing sides of the object under test, and
a main test component arranged to equivalently control each of the in parallel allocated test components in the incoming and the outgoing sides of the object, whereby a symmetric test structure is provided for testing the object.
Several advantages are obtained by means of the present invention. The solution provides a symmetric testing arrangement, in which all testing components can be equally controlled. The testing results obtained from two different sides of an object to be tested ar comparable to each other which makes the further analyzing of the results easier to accomplish, and gives more reliable results for the testing procedures.
In the following the present invention and the other objects and advantages thereof will be described in an exemplifying manner with reference to the annexed drawings, in which similar reference characters throughout the various figures refer to similar features.